A nanopositioning mechanism or stage is a device that requires a high positioning accuracy and repeatability in the nanometric regime. It also typically deploys a feedback sensor and an actuator with similar nanometric resolution in order to be used in an automatic or programmable mode to determine position precisely. The actuator and feedback sensor are often closed using a control loop in order to maintain a precise position by compensating for mechanical drift and other phenomena that affect position stability. If the sample or device being positioned covers a macroscopic length or area (macroscopic compared to the travel range in the axis of motion perpendicular to the sample or device), it is also often a requirement that it be held microscopically parallel to the fixed world reference plane as it is translated in the axis of travel. The purpose of the described invention is to ensure via an intrinsic mechanical means that a moving large area platform (e.g. that holds the sample or device) is maintained microscopically parallel. This is one embodiment of a wider variety of uses of the invention described.
For this purpose, at a conceptual level, two planes are necessary: a reference fixed plane and a moving plane. The moving plane is required to be parallel with the reference as it translates. Traditional solutions for achieving this deploy more than one actuator placed between the reference and the moving plane. Each actuator has its own sensor for detecting the stroke. By having multiple pairs of actuators and sensors, the parallelism can be maintained using a multi channel control system often with closed loop control on each actuator/sensor combination. However it would be preferable from a cost and control complexity perspective if for these systems only one actuator with one sensor is required with the parallelism maintained in an intrinsic manner.